Washington Park neighbor complains

Sep. 29, 2012

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OVER-THE-RHINE — One of Cincinnati’s oldest neighborhoods is once again experiencing growing pains. And the latest ones involve, well, toilets.

The focus is Washington Park, an eight-acre green space opened three months ago after a $48 million renovation. It’s the site, through Saturday night, of the main stage of the MidPoint Music Festival. More than 23,000 wristbands were sold for the event in 2011, and big crowds are expected all weekend in the park, on the 12th Street midway and at venues throughout Over-the-Rhine and Downtown.

The festival opened Thursday night.

To Tim Mara, it will be another example of two major problems caused by wildly successful park programming – too much noise going on too long after scheduled hours and too many people using his street as a urinal.

“It’s not uncommon to see guys taking a leak against my neighbor’s fence while their wives or girlfriends wait in the street,” said Mara, 63, a lawyer and former Green Township trustee who moved in March from the suburbs onto Pleasant Street. His home is 250 feet from the park’s permanent stage.

The crowds, he said, are too big for a neighborhood park in which alcohol is sold. The park fails to meet standards for the number of restroom facilities. Music shows on Thursday and Friday nights through the summer drew anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 visitors and no portable toilets were made available.

The MidPoint stage on the west end of the park’s Civic Lawn is expected to draw crowds of more than 5,000 today and Saturday, equal to the popular Friday rhythm-and-blues shows.

Park manager Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC) sponsors park events. Permanent restrooms provide five toilets for women, three toilets and two urinals for men, and four toilets for families. For MidPoint, 10 portable toilets were brought into the park at a cost of $1,500 to 3CDC, said its spokeswoman, Anastasia Mileham.

“We have been working through a lot of issues in programming a new park,” Mileham said. “We are certainly taking all concerns seriously.”

Including toilets. The Maryland-based American Restroom Association, whose mission to “advocate for the availability of clean, safe and well designed public restrooms,” borrows from the National Park Service to generate a crowd-facility ratio.

For an event drawing 5,000 people that lasts four to six hours at which alcohol is available, the association recommends 30 toilets and 15 sinks for women and nine toilets, 23 urinals and 15 sinks for men. That’s 61 facilities. With the 10 portables, Washington Park will offer 24 during MidPoint.

“We’ve seen this a lot in these types of situations around the country,” said Bob Brubaker, restroom association program manager.

Mara has complained to City Hall, police and 3CDC, of which Enquirer Publisher and President Margaret E. Buchanan is a board member. Mara even wrote in August to the Ohio Liquor Control Board to oppose the park’s liquor license. The developer has said that some summer events drew 8,000 to 10,000 people to Washington Park.

Mara said that Great American Ball Park has 1.58 toilets per 1,000 Reds baseball fans. “Which,” he said, “means 158 toilets would be needed at Washington Park in order to meet that standard.”

Cincinnati police have received complaints about public urination during park events.

“There are not many, but they involve visitors, not homeless people or neighborhood residents,” said Capt. Gary Lee, District 1 commander, who praised 3CDC for working in a “continuous-improvement mode.” Lee and other officers met earlier this month at the Pleasant Street home of Brad and Karen Hughes, among the newcomers who paid at least $350,000 to live in townhouses or restored buildings that line the street.

“It’s exciting here. We love it,” said Hughes, 60, a pharmaceutical company employee who moved in January with his wife, also 60, a tenured University of Cincinnati design professor.

Michael, 50, and Karen Hogue, 41, moved into a new home in May at the corner of Pleasant and 15th streets. Professionals at General Electric and Fifth Third Bank, they once lived in West Chester. “This is the best of urban living,” she said.

Yet Josh Spring, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition and an Over-the-Rhine resident, says he finds irony in how pro-development forces once said too many drunk people used the park and walked through the neighborhood. “Now it’s the tourists who are inebriated,” he said, “and what’s obvious is tourists don’t respect the place as much as people who live here.”